Other Hobby--Minerals

[JBL]

Hey Guys,
I thought that I'd post a pic from my other hobby--collecting minerals. This is actually a micromount, a mineral mounted in a space less than 1" in size, requiring magnification. See if you can guess what it is! I'll provide more details if anyone is interested. Oh and thanks to Andrew for helping me to get the pic here!!

 

[Millipede]

flourite?

 

[swords]

See if you can guess what it is

A rock!





My plant growing uncle was also a big rock and mineral collector. As a kid I loved looking at his mineral collection. I can't identify many minerals though.

 

[elgecko]

I saw the topic starter (JBL) and thought wow that's a name I have not seen in a long time.
Saw you had a thread on 5/12 reintroducing yourself... never saw the post.

Sorry that the trip to the Pine Barrens made you go undercover for so long. Guess I will not tell you the 6th annual trip is coming up in July. LOL

Welcome back.

 

[larry]

kryptonite!

 

[seedjar]

The inside of a Milky Way bar!
~Joe

 

[Sig]

Regular salt?

 

[IronTom]

Could it be copper? The only other green rock I can think of is Malachite, but that isn't showing any striping...

 

[jimscott]

Calcite? I used to be into rocks in elementary school. Too bad I didn't choose Geology a a major....

 

[JBL]

Some good guesses but if it were the inside of a milky way, it would be inside of me! Millipede's guess of fluorite was good because it is a modified octahedron. Copper is also a good guess because it is a greenish color and comes from copper and lead mines.

The micromount group that I belong to thinks that it's a modified galena crystal with chrysocolla coating it (epimorph?) The mine is the Ecton Mine in Audubon Pennsylvania, and was a lead and copper mine that helped to fund John James Audubon during his first years in the US.

The crystal is actually only a couple of millmeters (approximately) in size. It is magnified 45X using an old American Optical stereozoom scope. The pic was taken with a Canon AS1100 hand held on the eyepiece. There are far better ways to capture these images than my set up, but it works ok. You'll also notice that the depth of field limitation allows only some of the specimen to be sharp. The matrix behind it is blurred. There are software programs designed to take serial shots starting top to bottom and combine them to give a sharp image of crystal and background matrix. I just haven't tried it yet.

I'll post another specimen shortly. Thanks for looking!

---------- Post added at 07:33 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:27 PM ----------

Here's the other pic as promised. This is wulfenite (orange) on pyromorphite (green) at 30X. This is from Phoenixville PA.